Then Gerry asked for me.

I was still in the bar.

I was kneeling over Phil’s body, weeping into his chest.

I hadn’t cried since I was sixteen years old, and my tears flooded out in waves as I knelt by my oldest friend’s body and felt sheared, in strips, of anything I’d ever known by which to define myself or my world.

“Phil,” I said and buried my head in his chest.

“He’s asking for you,” Devin said.

I looked up at him and felt removed from everything and everyone.

I noticed a fresh swath of blood on Phil’s shirt, where my head had been, and remembered that Gerry had cut me.

“Who?” I said.

“Glynn,” Oscar said. “He’s trapped in the playground. With hostages.”

“You got sharpshooters?”

“Yes,” Devin said.

I shrugged. “So shoot him.”

“Can’t do it.” Devin handed me a towel for my cheek.

Then Oscar told me about the baby strapped to Glynn’s back and the shotgun taped to the mother’s head and the gasoline.

It didn’t seem real to me, though.

“He killed Phil,” I said.

Devin grasped my arm roughly and pulled me to my feet.

“Yes, Patrick, he did. And now he might kill two more people. Care to help us prevent that?”

“Yeah,” I said, and my voice didn’t sound like my own. It sounded dead. “Sure.”

They followed me out to my car as I shrugged on the bulletproof vest they gave me and put a fresh clip in my Beretta. Bolton joined us on the avenue.

“He’s surrounded,” he said. “Boxed in.”

I felt as numb as I’ve ever felt, as if I’d been cored clean of emotions as swiftly as you’d core an apple.

“Be quick,” Oscar said. “You got five minutes or he maims a hostage.”

I nodded, pulled my shirt and jacket on over the vest as we reached my car.

“You know Bubba’s warehouse,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“The fence that runs around it also runs around the playground.”

“I’m aware of this,” Devin said.

I opened the car, popped the glove compartment, began pulling out its contents and spilling them on the seats.

“What’re you doing, Patrick?”

“The fence,” I said, “has a hole in it. You can’t see it in the dark because it’s just a cut. You push at it and it flaps forward.”

“Okay.”

I saw the edge of a small steel cylinder sticking up from the pile of matchbooks and warranty information and various papers and screws on my seat.

“The hole is at the east corner of the fence where the posts meet at the beginning of Bubba’s land.”

Devin looked at the cylinder as I shut the door and headed up the avenue toward the playground.

“What’s that in your hand?”

“It’s a one-shot.” I loosened my watchband, slid the cylinder between the leather strap and my wrist.

“A one-shot.”

“Christmas present from Bubba,” I said. “Years ago.” I flashed it at him. “One bullet. I depress this button, it’s like a trigger. The bullet leaves the cylinder.”